The Derelict Daughter : New American Press : 9781941561102 : 1941561101 : 01 Mar 2018 : "The Derelict Daughter grabbed me by the throat in the first three lines: 'I've dug up my brother / and propped him against my shoulder, / his weight like a sagged-bag of dog food.' This collection sizzles and sparks, electric with grief and violence, charged with a brother's suicide, a father's death, a mother's unraveling. Here the past is like a too-real dream that won't end, but the poems are so gorgeous, despite the darkness, I have to admit: I didn't want to wake from it." -- MAGGIE SMITH Brittney Scott's debut poetry collection is exceptional: brave, ferocious, and smart. Very, very smart. "Often I am already dead, the dying already over," she says in "The Weather of Dreams." These poems convince us that she is telling the truth. At the same time, her ways of unifying a poem are sophisticated and inventive. I read many collections each year but I have never read one as full of feeling or a